Good and Bad Teaching

Give a ‘score’ for each one, on a scale from -2 to +2,

(- 2 = very harmful, - 1= harmful, 0 = no effect, + I = beneficial, +2 =
very beneficial).
a) The teacher corrects every mistake

a) Probably harmful – it is likely to discourage fluency. But it depends on how the

teacher corrects the errors; it will be less harmful if the teacher corrects ‘gently’.

b) The teacher hardly ever corrects mistake.

b) Probably also harmful, as the students may feel that they are not being helped
enough.

c) The teacher lets students know who is first, second, last, etc. in the class.

c) This depends on the recognized system in the school – students may expect it.
But in general it is likely to discourage all the lower half of the class, and make
language learning seem unnecessarily competitive.

d) The teacher praises students who answer correctly.

d) Will certainly have a good effect by encouraging students; but if the teacher
praises too much it will have no effect at all.

e) The teacher criticizes students who repeatedly make mistakes.

e)It will usually have a bad effect, by discouraging weaker students; it could be
beneficial to criticize more confident students occasionally.

f) The teacher punishes students who behave badly.

f) Depends on the circumstances and type of class.

g) The teacher usually chooses good students to answer.

g) Bad effect if good students are allowed to dominate the class and make weaker
students feel neglected; the teacher should try to balance questions, asking
easier ones to weaker students.
h) The teacher often chooses weaker students to answer

h) Good effect, as long as weaker students are not made to feel victimised.

i) The teacher uses only English in the lesson.

i) English has to be used in a mixed nationality class. But if all students share the
same first language, it is unnecessary to use only English, and could be
frustrating if students do not understand. A good solution would be to use
mainly English, but the first language occasionally for difficult explanations and
instructions.

j) The teacher uses a lot of Spanish (L1) during English lessons.

j) Very harmful, as it gives the class no feeling that English is a language that can
be used to communicate, and give them no chance to hear or use English.

k) The teacher promotes the use of bilingual dictionaries in the classroom

k) Depends on the classroom and the level of the advance of the language.

l) The teacher pronunciation is not so good

l) Harmful. Because pronunciation mistakes can affect meaning and comprehension of

the new message.

m) The teacher does not speak naturally

m) The teacher is the model of the new language and his performance should be the
best

n) The teacher doesn’t seem interested in the lesson

n) Very harmful. The teacher is the first resource and stimulus that students can have.